Introduction:

Source: NASA Open Data (‘https://data.nasa.gov/dataset/meteorite-landings’)

Every meteorite that reaches Earth carries a piece of our solar system’s history. NASA’s Meteorite Landings dataset compiles thousands of these discoveries. This dataset contains detailed records of over 45,000 meteorites that have been found or observed falling to Earth.

The dataset includes the following key variables:

  • name: Official meteorite name
  • id: Identification number from NASA
  • nametype: “Valid” is a normal meteoroid. “Relict” is a weathered down meteoroid
  • class: Meteorite classification (e.g., H5, L6, CM2)
  • mass (g): Mass of the meteorite in grams
  • fall: “Fell” (observed fall) or “Found” later (not observed)
  • year: The year it fell or was found
  • reclat / reclong: Latitude and longitude of discovery site
  • type: The main group of which each meteorite is a part of
    • Stony: Outer crust of asteroids
    • Iron: Cores of asteroids
    • Stony-Iron: Core-mantle boundary
    • Achondrite: Melted
    • Unknown/other

Exploring this dataset gives us the chance to uncover patterns in how meteorites fall, what materials they contain, and what they reveal about the formation of planets.

Sample of Meteorite Dataset
name id type nametype class mass fall year reclat reclong
Aachen 1 Stony Valid L5 21 Fell 1880 50.77500 6.08333
Aarhus 2 Stony Valid H6 720 Fell 1951 56.18333 10.23333
Abee 6 Achondrite Valid EH4 107000 Fell 1952 54.21667 -113.00000
Acapulco 10 Achondrite Valid Acapulcoite 1914 Fell 1976 16.88333 -99.90000
Achiras 370 Stony Valid L6 780 Fell 1902 -33.16667 -64.95000
Adhi Kot 379 Achondrite Valid EH4 4239 Fell 1919 32.10000 71.80000

Tools:

  • dplyr
  • tidyr
  • stringr
  • plotly
  • maps
  • mapview
  • sf
  • knitr

Objective

For my project, I’ll explore NASA’s Meteorite Landings dataset. The data shows meteorite discoveries from all over the world, including their size, location, and type. I want to find patterns in when and where meteorites are found and what kinds are most common.

Here are the questions I want to answer:

    1. Where on Earth have the largest meteorites been found?
    1. Which meteorite types are found most often?
    1. How has the number of meteorite discoveries changed over time?
    1. Which hemisphere has more recorded meteorites?
    1. Does latitude affect where meteorites land
    1. Do we find more meteors or are they found beceause we saw them fall?

Where on Earth?!

Do most of the meteors land at?

The graph shows us the thousands of points on the world map. Just a few observations we can note that in the more secluded areas like the Amazon Forest, the Russia tundras, and north Canada we are left with little to no data. This doesn’t necessarily mean that no meteorites are there, just that it’s been harder to explore. We can see and guess where we think is the hot spots for meteorites, but with points on top of points we don’t get the full picture, lets take a closer look.

Density of the meteor landings

## Warning: The dot-dot notation (`..level..`) was deprecated in ggplot2 3.4.0.
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The density heat map shows us the hot spots for meteorites, at least ones we’ve found. A few notable locations; West Africa, United Emirates, and Antarctica.

Which meteorites are found more often

***

Northern or Southern?

Here we look at which hemisphere has found the greater amount of meteorites

This is clearly where Antartica takes the lead

We can see that while the southern hemisphere holds the most when it comes to total meteors since they’re the most with stony, the northern hemisphere is the leader when it comes to iron meteorites

## Warning: Removed 19 rows containing non-finite outside the scale range
## (`stat_boxplot()`).

## `summarise()` has grouped output by 'hemisphere'. You can override using the
## `.groups` argument.

The biggest meteor found so far

name id type nametype class mass fall year reclat reclong hemisphere
Hoba 11890 Iron Valid Iron, IVB 60000000 Found 1920 -19.58333 17.91667 Southern Hemisphere